What Dreams May Come
by Kendra Vale
Summary: Four years after solving the Labyrinth, Sarah begins to suffer from strange, recurring lucid dreams featuring the Goblin King himself. Now, piecing them together - and dealing with the price of Jareth's treachery - will test even Sarah's strong will.
1. Somnambulist

Chapter One: Somnambulist

Chapter One: Somnambulist

"_Sarah…" That single, mocking word rang in her ears, spoken with a mixture of contempt and amusement, beckoned her more than any other sound could have. She knew the voice, the cold detachment and cruelty that were bound into it just as a natural slide towards seductiveness was a part of the man it belonged to. _

_She found that she was standing on cold, pale stone, in a hall that looked chillingly familiar. The strange, otherworldly shapes of the architecture, combined with the gilded scenery stretched above them, told her two things instantly. First, this was some strange, sanitized version of the castle beyond the Goblin City, and second, this was the ballroom of her nightmares. It looked like a place she knew all too well, but it felt like another one of _his _waking dreams, concocted to control her._

_She turned, noting that she was dressed in a very old and dear set of clothing, the faded jeans and slightly ethereal tunic that had helped her to survive the endless deceptions of the Underground. And, as sure as she had known it would be, there behind her stood the man who was the cause of all of it. He looked effortless, damnably alluring as he'd always been, being the fantasy of an over-active young girl's mind, after all, and just as irritatingly arrogant as ever._

_Sarah knew then, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that this was a dream. He had left her alone years ago; she was four years older and that much wiser now, and the only way she could possibly be drawn back to her youth and vulnerability would be through a dream. Or, if he was here calling her name, then this was more likely to be a nightmare. One that she was not going to stand for._

"_Hello, Jareth." She spoke as evenly as she could, meeting his emotionless and yet somehow vivid gaze without flinching. Just because he'd made her look like a child did not mean that she had to act like one. She even managed a derisive smile, and willed herself to wake up with all the strength she could muster. "You _still_ have no power over me." She could feel the dream splintering all around her, the cold marble fading into formless mist that flowed around them._

_His perfect features never wavered, as the ground went out beneath her._

Sarah woke with a start, her body jerking as though she had fallen from a great height and collided with a very stiff, painful surface.. It felt as though she had just come out of a dream in which she'd slipped from the edge of a cliff, and come to think of it, there had been stone…though how or why escaped her. Her dreams often did that, fading to fog the moment she opened her eyes, but it was disconcerting all the same.

She sat up gingerly, feeling the ache of her muscles as they pulled her upright, and winced. The back of her head throbbed with particular intensity. This felt more like she had fallen from a great height, collided with her headboard, and fallen to the floor for good measure. What on earth could that have been…about? Oh, no. She was looking up at her mattress, not down. She really had ended up on the – very lightly – carpeted floor below her bunk.

"Are you all right?" The voice of her roommate, Meghan, spoke from up above her, as the girl leaned out over the edge of the bed. "Looks like you finally managed to fall off. Must've been some nightmare." Meghan looked concerned, but only momentarily, her brown eyes bright with barely-hidden interest behind her horn-rimmed glasses. While she usually came off as a perpetual smart-aleck, she found Sarah's ability to have lucid dreams to be endlessly fascinating. "What was it this time, astronauts or cliff-diving?"

Sarah attempted to laugh, but it came out as a more nervous sound. She picked herself up carefully, leaning on the wooden frame of her bed for support. "I don't remember…but I think I knew it was a dream when it was happening." She tucked a strand of dark hair back behind her ears, dreading a glance in the mirror for fear of what static would do to her bed-head, and instead turned her attention to the clock, which read 7:04, a.m.

Meghan lunged eagerly for the notebook she kept on the desk beneath her bunk, nearly falling out of it in the process. She kept detailed notes on what Sarah dreamed and when, out of a desire to write a case study about her in the future. She was an aspiring young psychologist, and apparently, Sarah's imagination was a perfect specimen, though why was a question Sarah had learned not to ask unless she felt the need for a long and technically detailed explanation, most of which she would fail to comprehend.

"Wait a minute…what are you doing awake at seven o'clock on a Saturday morning?" Sarah nearly did a double-take. She was well aware of Meghan's tendency to sleep for most of the weekend, and to hang a very large and obnoxious 'Do Not Disturb' sign on their door featuring an image of intruders being char-grilled by an angry-looking dragon. For her to be conscious this early was nothing short of a miracle. "Who are you, and what have you done with my roommate?"

"We have taken her for observation, but do not worry, earthling. She will be returned from the Trichlon Nebula before it is time for her lunching." Meghan wrote furiously, keeping up a deliberately flat, processed tone of voice as she pronounced this, then snapped the notebook shut and grinned. "No, really, I was up all night writing my idiotically bad paper for Philosophy, so I could spend my free time sleeping." Returning the notebook to its hiding place, she flopped down and pulled the covers up over her head. "Wake me if you start to levitate."

Sarah shook her head, and stumbled sideways into a long-suffering armchair, her head swimming with static. She tried momentarily to recall the dream that had yanked her so unceremoniously from her sleep and dumped her onto the ground, but it eluded her. It had been a long time, bordering on never, that anything had actually wounded her while dreaming, but judging by the headache she felt coming on, it was definitely occurring now, reminding her of other days…other things.

For some reason, the fog-dream put her in mind of her little adventure into the Labyrinth four years earlier, which she had accepted long ago was either the product of an overactive imagination or not something she wanted to mention to anyone sane. Either way, it had been put squarely behind her, except as a reminder that she was capable of taking care of herself, and treasuring her half-brother Toby even when he did things like paint her face green while she was asleep.

"Oh, Sarah?" Meghan surfaced from her blanket-cocoon. "You should put some ice on that, or you'll end up with a misshapen head. Just saying." With that, she vanished into the otherworld of under the covers.

Without answering, Sarah rose, and climbed back up onto her mattress. She was unable to shake the sensation of falling, or the feeling that there was more to this than a simple nightmare. Misshapen head or not, she needed to get back to sleep and get to the bottom of this. All she had to do was find the same dream again, she reasoned, sliding under the coverlet, her eyes closing. How difficult could it be?

"_Don't defy me, Sarah." The same soft cadence greeted her on her return, spoken again from behind her. Sarah blinked, trying to remember if the dream had been this bright, or this open the last time she had been in it, but make no mistake, this was a dream. There was no other way he could be speaking to her, in the same tones he had attempted to ensnare her with years earlier._

_This time, the scene was a garden, but an eerily cold one. Despite the vast hedges, formed of climbing roses wound around intricately constructed trellises, she felt detached, torn from the portions of reality that would have made this scene a warm or even romantic one. She was surrounded by the crimson blooms, yet the air was devoid of their scent, and worse, silent. No life stirred around them, and in the center of the winding pathways was a fountain, against which the Goblin King leaned._

"_So you do suck the fun out of everything," Sarah mused, her gaze taking in their surroundings. It suited him, in a way that she could barely define, outwardly beautiful and yet lacking anything that could make it real. This garden did not live, or breathe, or even feel as though it could. Just like a certain trickster's heart._

"_I do?" Jareth arched one slender brow, looking amused rather than angered this time. He had done something to her, to punish her for her defiance, but she was unable to recall what exactly it had been. "How interesting." He straightened, moving towards her, oddly dark against such a starkly bright background. "I shall have to remember to provide you with more 'fun' in the future, Sarah."_

_Something about the way his words slunk past his lips caused her skin to crawl. Sarah took an unconscious step backwards, her eyes narrowing. "I don't know what your definition of 'fun' is, but I really don't think I want to find out." She kept her expression as defiant as she could, lifting her head high, meeting his gaze again with all the hatred she could muster. "What are you doing in my dream?"_

_Jareth's lips curved in a smirk. "__Your__ dream? Really?" The laughter in his voice had intensified, as he moved ever closer, so rapidly that she could hardly blink before he was before her, cupping her chin in one gloved hand. "What makes you so certain that this is your dream and not mine, Sarah?" His grip was strong, and the force of his gaze had turned dizzying. "Not unless having you this close is your desire now…" He leaned towards her, only a breath away, still smiling crookedly._

"_Not…unless…Hell…froze…over." Sarah hated herself for stuttering, but as usual, Jareth was willing to cheat and enthrall her by any means necessary, including the magically-induced-and-thus-not-real variety. The only thing having him this close induced in her was the desire to spit in his face, though given that this time he did seem to have the upper hand, she did not think it was wise to attempt. Jareth was not the type to suffer slights to his ego._

"_Your wish is my command." He released her abruptly, thrusting her backwards, and she stumbled on ground that was suddenly far looser. She had one last glimpse of his icily beautiful face twisted by a wicken grin, and dropped away, feeling the dream shatter around her once again…_

With a certain sense of déjà vu, Sarah woke with a start, feeling once more as though her internal organs had suffered whiplash. This time, she was mercifully still in the same place, and not recovering from injuries on the moth-eaten carpet below her. She slid down from the bunk, touching a hand to her chin, which for some reason felt bruised, and swung around to look at the clock.

"Oh, good, you're finally up." Meghan lifted two fingers in greeting, thoroughly engrossed in a storm of typing. "You've been out all day, but there's still some lo mein left if you want it." She motioned towards the take-out carton on the table between them, surrounded by the detritus of crushed containers and fortune cookies. "Good thing it's Saturday, right? Otherwise I'd fail Philosophy and you'd have missed all your classes."

Sarah blinked, her eyes shifting to the time on the clock. 9:30, p.m. She had just inadvertently slept through an entire day, without even realizing it. She frowned, and leaned against the bedframe for support as the room spun drunkenly. This might be the status quo for Meghan, who seemed to like spending her vacations comatose, but it was not like her at all. It meant she had ignored who knew how many friends, forgotten to do the majority of her homework, and worse, hadn't even started on the piece for her Fiction class that was due Monday.

Without fully understanding why, Sarah reached up and closed her hands around something smooth and cold lying across her pillow. Her eyes widening in surprise, she lifted it, lowering the mystery object so that she could look at it. Lifting it up to the light, she felt a shudder twist its way up her spine.

Clutched in her grasp was a long-stemmed rose, carved entirely of ice.

"Cool!" Meghan shot up, abandoning her laptop and struggles with 'the study of stupid questions', as she termed the subject, in favor of examining the sculpture in Sarah's hands. "Do you have a secret admirer, or is this your hidden psychic powers coming to the surface?" She snatched the stylized ice cube without waiting for Sarah to answer and smiled, face alight with the joy of discovery.

"Hmm, well, whichever it is, the person who left this is saying something about you being cold-hearted. Why else would they give you something this beautiful made of out ice?" Meghan eyed her carefully, intuition kicking in. "You look wiped, Sarah. Are you sure you've been asleep all day? Maybe these dreams of yours are active ones, you know, like those serial comics. You're living out a whole other life in your head."

Sarah could hardly speak in the face of such supremely normal oddness. Meghan simply gave off the air of a girl who could be completely ordinary while taking in things that would make most 'normal' people run screaming. Faced with an ice-rose appearing out of nowhere and Sarah's strange actions, she simply shrugged and ran with whatever theory occurred to her at the time.

"I don't know, exactly." Attempting to make sense of this was not an easy thing to do, although since Sarah had already experienced her fair share of strange growing up, it was easy for her at least to accept that magic was involved. Meghan very clearly saw the things she did, so an overactive imagination was out, meaning there was only one possible explanation. "Did I say anything while I was out?"

"Oh yeah, you did!" Meghan lunged for their refrigerator, placing the rose in the freezer compartment, probably to preserve it for future observation. "You said some guy's name, Garret, I think, or Jared. Does that mean something?"

Very slowly, Sarah nodded. "Yes. Yes it does." It meant that there was only one person who could possibly be involved in this – someone whose name sounded very much like Garrett or Jared. Someone who loved nothing more than to manipulate her for his own sick amusement because he could. _Jareth. _"Oh, he's going to pay for this."


	2. Glimpses

Chapter Two: Glimpses

Chapter Two: Glimpses

"_JARETH!" This time, Sarah wasted no time on pleasantries and bewilderment. The moment the dream caught hold of her she let it loose, more of a wild cry than an actual accusation. There were a great many things she had learned to stand for, simply because ignoring them was better than wasting precious time, but morons on subways or strangers shouting things couldn't hold a candle to the rage that spun through her. He'd already insinuated himself into her head once, and she was certainly no longer a child._

_She found herself standing before his throne, this time in a hall she'd walked before. He was sprawled across it in the deliberately casual way that only someone of his grace could manage without looking ridiculous, lifting his pale head at her words. His expression was completely blank as he arched a brow, looking as though she had just roused him from some long introspective trip that was far more interesting than she was. "Yes?" He spoke so casually that, had this been a situation she was certain of surviving, Sarah would have been tempted to hit him._

_Instead, she froze. It was as if his mere presence dulled things, slowing the thoughts in her head and driving away her anger almost entirely. "Are you no longer capable of speech?" He sounded genuinely amused, but more than that, he seemed as relaxed as any self-respecting trickster would be upon seeing that his victim had played right into his hands. "I assume that, since you sought me, you must have something you intend to say. Unless I render you speechless?"_

_Jareth was on his feet in one fluid motion, sliding towards her as he had done before, his features just as sharply etched and unreadable as she remembered. "Come now, Sarah, there's no need to be frightened…much." _

_Regaining her ability to react, Sarah glared. Hatred had driven her here, hatred borne with her from the outside world from the knowledge that he was tampering with her head. That he was actually here and not just a figment of her imagination, which made it far more dangerous for her. It was one thing to go after the Goblin King in a kind of reality, but here, she was inside of her own head, and infuriatingly uncertain. In this kind of contest, there was no prize for her to fight for other than forcing him to go away._

"_And Jack the Ripper was a teddy bear." Sarcasm poured out, possibly the only useful weapon she had in her arsenal. It seemed to force Jareth to at the least pay attention to her. "What the hell are you doing in my mind? What do you want with me?" Sarah was almost frightened to hear how he would twist that answer, but at this point waking up was an act of cowardice. The desire to run had been left behind, replaced by an overwhelming need to rearrange his perfect features in vengeance. _

"_I did offer you your dreams, Sarah. Now I'm merely joining them." In half a heartbeat, he was standing directly before her, a faint smile on his lips as he looked down at her. Damn him and his disappearing acts, magic could be infuriating when you handed it to a man with a theatrical streak. "And as for what I want from you, I believe we've already had this discussion…" _

_Oh, hell no. His meaning was all too clear as he leaned towards her, attempting to catch her gaze the same way he had the last time, to freeze her in place. Rebellion surged through every cell of her body, and Sarah lifted her head, making no move to lean away from him, but simply glaring him down. "You. Can't. Have. Me." _

_Gazing at the handsome veneer he put forward, she was struck by how hollow he seemed, as though there was simply no emotion at all beneath the mask. It had never been easier to tell herself that he did not love, and that furthermore, he could not. He didn't have the faintest idea of what love was, or any human feeling for that matter. He was simply not human, and as these highly annoying dreams were proving, did not have a heart, or even a point. And she did not have forever to spend being chased after by the fantasies _

_A faint, defiant smirk forming on her lips, Sarah leaned even closer, and spat in his face. "Now get the hell out of my head!" The moment the words were out of her mouth, time slowed to the pace of molasses, while he, outside of it, raised a hand to his frozen features and glared, a slow-burning, glacial fury rising in his eyes. For the first time since she'd entered the dream, Sarah remembered to be afraid._

_The universe around them dissolved, far less gently than before. The sudden burst of wind it released struck Sarah like a slap across the face, and she was gripped by an overwhelming sense of cold…_

xxxxxxx

Gasping, Sarah was rudely awakened from her dream, feeling its details slide from her grasp as she was returned quite abruptly to reality. She found herself shivering, and realized that she was soaking wet. She lifted a hand to her hair and frowned, noting that it was only her head – and now her pillow as an innocent bystander – that had been doused in the icy liquid.

"Meghan!" A moment too late, she connected the sight of her roommate standing below her, smiling innocently and holding a bucket, to the fact that she had been splashed by water, and realized it had been a harebrained way to rouse her. "Why did you pour water over my head? Couldn't you have just hit me with a pillow?!"

Meghan shrugged her shoulders. "I tried, Sar, really I did, but you just wouldn't wake up. I banged things, I smacked you, and short of actually throwing you out of bed, I figured I'd try out my new bucket." Setting the bucket down on their ever-expanding junk table, she shrugged her shoulders and examined her reflection. "But you know, I couldn't just leave you here on a Monday morning, I figured you'd kill me, and besides, the look on your face was priceless!"

Shock struck Sarah in a very unpleasant wave, almost causing her to sink back under the blankets. "Monday…morning?" She had been unconscious almost a full day, then. The dream had trapped her so completely that she had been unable to wake since Saturday night, when she had gone into it to retaliate, and she still could not remember what had taken place. Other than the fact that it had shaken her, badly, she had no details of it at all, except for the unshakable knowledge that Jareth was involved.

"Oh, come on, relax. We're doing this in the name of science, aren't we?" Meghan swung around, a broad grin on her face. "You finished your calculus homework, wrote a wonderfully good paper – if I do say so myself – for English, and even managed to finish something for Fiction, although you might want to work on keeping your style the same." Beaming brightly, she picked up a book-laden messenger bag and held it out to her. "Well, come on, your classes aren't going to attend themselves!"

Sarah could only stare for a very long moment. "You did my homework for me?" She felt a sudden rush of gratitude, and practically leapt down from the bunk to hug her. "I could kiss you!" She took the bag, slung it over her shoulder, and froze. "Oh."

"Yeah, you might wanna put clothes on _before_ you leave the dorm, Sarah." Meghan shook her head, smiling. "And don't kiss me; I have class with your boyfriend." She started for the door, a bounce in her step, pausing only to throw back, "And I want to hear all about this Jarrett guy when you come back! He'd better be worth it!"

Sarah shook her head, and turned her gaze to the mirror, raising a hand to the distinctive red welt she bore across one cheek that had nothing to do with her watery awakening. No, the Goblin King was not worth any of the time she'd lost to him.

xxxxxxx

_Entering the dream this time was far more jarring, her feet colliding with the ground so sharply that it felt as though Sarah had just fallen several stories out a window and landed on concrete, standing upright. The impact with the stone beneath her sent something like pain jolting through her shins and ankles, causing her to wince and then blink in confusion. Since when was it possible to feel anything this realistic in a dream? The telling sign that you _were _dreaming was always that you couldn't feel pain._

_A moment later, she actually looked at their surroundings and had to swallow a rather loud and childish scream. She was standing on the narrow surface of a wall between two parapets, balanced on an edge barely four inches wide. Hundreds of feet separated her from the nonexistent but unfortunately solid ground below, and as around any tall structure in a vaguely realistic world, wind whipped around her, threatening her sense of balance and attempting to tip her off entirely._

_Sarah was no more frightened of heights than the next person, but anyone with an ounce of sanity would be slightly shell-shocked to discover they were in such a precarious position. Especially considering that the solid, flat part of the castle wall was also far enough below her that Jareth, who stood there as unfeeling and nonchalant as ever, had to look up at her. The top of his head did not reach the level of the edge she was wavering on, and his head was thrown back, studying her with an amused half-smirk on his pale lips. He extended one white-gloved hand towards her, palm up, as if to offer her his aid in climbing down without dying._

"_Stuck, are we?" There was no hint of awareness in his tone, no sense at all that he was the cause of her predicament. He seemed to find throwing her into these situations, as punishment for her growing hatred of him, to be endlessly entertaining. "All you have to do is take it, Sarah." He sounded annoyingly reasonable when he stated it like that, as though it was perfectly natural for her to take the hand of the man who'd spent all his energy tormenting her and take his help, with no consideration to what she'd be agreeing to in doing so. But Sarah was older now, and wiser. And he was being a bastard._

"_Right, because being the evil, twisted mastermind who landed me in this situation and insists on flirting with me inside my own head makes me so likely to trust you." Sarah examined her fingernails, speaking as dryly as she could, refusing to be fazed by him. "Is there a point to this, or is this just another excuse for you to try and hit on me or analyze me or some idiotic thing like that? No, wait, don't answer. I know the answer to that one." She thought aloud, her thoughts racing. There had to be some way she could one-up him, show the Goblin King she was no helpless damsel._

_The plan ran through her mind so quickly she barely had time to wonder if it was going to work, beyond reasoning that dying in your dreams did not mean that she would wake up in reality also dead. Sarah smiled, the same faint flash of intellect and mischief she had shown him so many years ago, and fixed her gaze on his. "You won't let me fall," she told him softly, trusting to nothing more than her instincts, and spread her arms out wide, her eyes closing._

_In one swift motion, Sarah stepped backwards onto nothing but air._

_The sensation came quickly, exhilarating. The bottom fell out of her being, her internal organs were thrown upwards, sending a jolt through her entire body, and she was falling, very quickly, the air roaring past her. It was deafening, shutting out all other sounds, so loud that it produced flickering feedback in her eardrums. The breath escaped her lungs in a rush, and she found it nearly impossible to breathe, her long hair whipping around her and sliding around her face. Yet she was still breathing, had the sense that her skin was taking in the oxygen, and still had not struck the ground, though she swore she should have by now._

_Sarah felt the dream rip around her, not the neat or even violent way that Jareth often dissolved the dreams, but sharper, more real. Someone, or something, took hold of her and jerked her backwards. She could feel the illusion pull at her, just as she felt her momentum build towards a collision, and then it gave. Stars danced in her vision, darkness creeping into it, and all was gone._

xxxxxxx

"What happened to her?"

"In my professional opinion, she fell asleep."

"Well, in my _professional _opinion, you shouldn't be here."

"Right, so I can leave you to molest her while she lies all unaware?"

"I would never do that!"

"Says the pedophile creep."

"I am not a pedophile! I'm only two years older than she is!"

"Like I said, pedophile."

Sarah's eyes flew open, taking in the familiar but not exactly welcome sight of the stark infirmary ceiling, its fluorescent lights humming softly through the bleached-bright air. She gasped for air, feeling as though all the wind had been knocked out of her on impact with the cot beneath her, her muscles stiff and aching as if it truly had happened. Without meaning to, she found herself sitting bolt upright, her gaze flicking to the two people bickering as they kept watch by her bedside.

One was Meghan, her glasses pushed down her nose so that she could glare over them at her opponent. The other was male, a subdued-looking young man whose perpetually cowlicked auburn hair and bright, slightly dazed hazel eyes were unmistakable. It was Kyle, the quiet but loyal senior who had earned the right to call himself her boyfriend. He was also one of the few people Meghan absolutely could not stand, on the grounds that he was 'completely, totally and without a doubt wrong' for Sarah.

"You're awake!" Kyle half-lunged, half-fell out of his folding chair to lean over her, reaching out to take her hand. "I saw them bring you in, they carried you past me, and I was so worried something had happened. Are you all right? How are you feeling? Did you hit your head on anything when you fell?"

Meghan rolled her eyes and reached across, jerking his hand firmly from hers. "Down, lover-boy. She just didn't get enough sleep this weekend and fell asleep in class, and happened to fall out of her desk when she did it." Her gaze lifted to Sarah's, clearly conveying a desire to hide what was really happening from Kyle until she had gotten all the juicy details herself. "Right, Sarah?"

Sarah found herself nodding, not wanting to be caught between them when Meghan was in such an argumentative frame of mind. "Yeah, although I don't remember the passing out and falling over part…just thinking that math class was especially boring this time." She forced herself to smile, not really wanting to have to launch into an explanation of what was really going on; somehow she doubted that any boyfriend, however loyal he might seem to be, would like hearing that she was being plagued by odd, flirtatious recurring dreams featuring otherworldly competition.

"On the bright side, now we know that Kyle can actually feel! I don't think he's ever been this un-subdued before, not even when that professor set all those snakes loose that one time." Meghan grinned, neatly elbowing him out of the way and setting herself down on the edge of the bed. "I vote that we ditch the dead weight and use your day off to do something that's actually fun."

"I vote not." Kyle shook his head, speaking softly but clearly. "Are you sure you're all right? There's been a few weird things going on today, and I'm not stupid enough to think Meghan's explanation is the truth." His gaze flicked to Meghan, assessing whether it was possible to sit on the edge of the cot with her, and then he sank down neatly into the chair again, penetrating gaze settling on Sarah. "I didn't see you once this weekend, and you never called me back, not even when you stood me up Saturday night. Are you sick, or are you trying to tell me something?"

Guilt swept in, replacing anxiety in Sarah's mind. She hadn't thought of him at all, not once, the entire time. She'd been too preoccupied with the weird, debilitated, Jareth-oriented dreams to even wonder what Kyle was doing, or remember that they'd had a date planned. "Oh, no, Kyle…" The words faded, replaced by the sudden, overwhelming urge to go back to sleep. It tugged on her, willing her eyelids downward, and she had to blink. It was as though the dreams were taking over her waking hours, keeping her from everything in favor of sleep. As though that was their purpose in the first place.

"I'm sick, well, at least I think I am. You know how I get, I spend all my time sleeping, and that's pretty much what happened this weekend. I passed out on Friday night and was barely awake until Monday morning." Sarah's gaze swept to Meghan accusingly, as she added, "Someone forgot to tell me that you called."

Meghan shrugged her shoulders, widening her eyes with faux-innocence. "What can I say? I was so worried about your condition, Sarah, and I thought romance would make your awful fever higher." In half a second flat, she'd lunged across the cot and was hauling Sarah to her feet. "In fact, I think you should forget about romance entirely, and come back with me to lie down. You're clearly still very ill."

Kyle rose slowly, shaking his head, and gently peeled Meghan off of Sarah. "Not so fast," he chided, a soft smile curving his lips. "Handling the patient is restricted to the doctors, miss." He settled one hand on her shoulder, and with the other, touched a hand to the side of her face. "Like, say, me." He tilted her chin up, and bent to brush his lips across hers, before laying a kiss on her forehead like a child. "Sadly, your lunatic is right, Sarah. You should go back to sleep." Releasing her lightly, he stepped back, offering a crooked, boyish smile before he drifted off, back to his work.

Meghan scowled. "What on _earth_ do you see in him?!"

Sarah smiled faintly. "You'd have to date him to know that."

Kyle's head reappeared around the partition. "Oh, Sarah?" He stepped back into view, ignoring the irritated calls of his superior from a distance. "I forgot to ask, but who was that guy I saw following you earlier?"

A sense of dread settled in Sarah's chest, slid down to her stomach, and remained there. For a moment it was all she could do to stare at him, and then she forced out the words, "What…guy? Following me when?"

"On the way into the infirmary, I saw him standing in the doorway when they carried you in, but he didn't come inside…he just sort of stared at you and left." Kyle frowned, expression thoughtful as he sought to remember more. "I only remember him because he looked so odd, like he just fell out of some myth…he was tall, at least I think, whitish hair, pale eyes…and there was some kind of pendant around his neck, I couldn't tell what it was. It was like he vanished into thin air."

That description, however vague, caused the dread to solidify Sarah's innards, turning them into something that felt inseparable from lead. She forced herself to shrug, and smile as though nothing was wrong, conveying complete obliviousness to who the stranger could be. "I must have been one of the theater people, they're always trying to get me to audition." She leaned slightly, craning her neck around him. "I think you should go, Kyle. You're no good to me filleted."

With a nod and mock-salute, Kyle vanished from view again. The moment he was gone, the smile fell off of Sarah's features, revealing an expression she was fairly certain was both shocked and worried, and most likely white as a sheet. "Meghan, help me, would you? I think I'm going to pass out." She reached out, taking her roommate's arm, and Meghan allowed her to lean obligingly. "I think I do need to lie down, and then I need to tell you something." If anyone would believe her about what was happening with the Goblin King, it would be Meghan.

To her credit, Meghan frowned, gaze fixed in a rather piercing way on hers. "You know who Kyle was talking about," she said softly, keeping her voice from carrying. "And whoever it is scares the hell out of you." Sarah nodded weakly, wanting more than anything to be able to keel over and be assured of a restful sleep, though what she probably needed was a whole lot of espresso and a bottle of No-Doz if she was going to make it through the day. "And this guy…is the same one you've been dreaming about!" Again, Sarah nodded.

"All right, come on. Let's get you back, I'll get the coffeemaker running, and then you're going to tell me everything. Got it?" Sarah managed another nod, and Meghan's arms fastened tightly around her shoulders. Before she could get out a word of protest, Meghan was dragging her, moving them along much more quickly than she could have if Sarah had been a willing participant rather than a helpless kidnap victim. But she was not about to argue, not if Meghan was the only person capable of helping her with this.

As they made their way out into the hallway, Sarah saw something, out of the corner of her eye – a flicker of white. It kept pace with them, just outside of her vision, until briefly (very briefly) it caught up with them. She caught sight of a pale figure, proud features shrouded by feathery hair, a soft grin on his face and the glint of silver around his neck, before it faded into nothing. Just a glimpse, but it was all she needed.

"Meghan? Keelhaul me faster."


	3. White Rabbit

Chapter Three: White Rabbit

Chapter Three: White Rabbit

"I don't believe this!" Meghan leaned back across from Sarah, brow furrowed, her expression one that hovered between anger and confusion. "Honestly, who on earth would buy something this ridiculous? It's so…so…" She trailed off, unable to complete the sentence, voice choked off by frustration.

Sarah sighed, washing down more of Meghan's supply of caffeine pills with another swig of coffee. "I told you that all the websites on fairies were written by twelve-year-old girls, but you wouldn't believe me." She set her mug down on the coffee table, which was rapidly developing into a miniature industrial wasteland, and walked around to sit beside Meghan on their very battered couch. "Don't throw the computer again, either. It might not survive another close encounter with the closet door."

Meghan rolled her eyes skyward and thrust the computer into Sarah's lap, jumping to her feet and pacing around the room. "I'm sorry, it's just, how am I supposed to help you if the most reliable source I have is Wikipedia? I can't keep the evil mind-invading fairies away from you if we don't know what _kind_ of evil mind-invading fairies we're dealing with, now can I?" Groaning, she lowered her face to her knees.

"Do you have even the slightest idea how strange that sounds when you say it out loud?" Sarah tilted her head slightly, attempting to fathom how any of their current conversation was possible. Normal human beings did not sit there quietly, listening to their friend recount how she was sucked out of reality by the magic-wielding, possibly imaginary Goblin King, forced to travel through an enchanted labyrinth, and alternately confused, turned around, and imprisoned in her own head so that she could rescue her infant brother from becoming a goblin. Normal human beings did things like ask if you were on any interesting drugs or had forgotten to take a medication this morning. With that eliminated, most normal human beings would hold you down and call the men in white coats to have your sanity reassessed.

Meghan, on the other hand, reached for the nearest laptop and started trying to do research. Their current topic of discussion was who or what exactly the Goblin King was. So far, they had determined that he was not a selkie, a kelpie, or any kind of mythological shapeshifter, and were now attempting to work through fairies. Unfortunately, every source available to them was either written by harebrained, wing-wearing young girls who called everything a 'fae', or ran together with other myths and had to be dissected before it made any kind of sense. There was, in other words, a decided lack of source material available to them, and of that, there was so far exactly nothing that was useful.

"Here's something…" Sarah entered a promising link, and was immediately relieved to discover the page she'd stumbled onto did not have flickering butterflies for a cursor or play irritating, bouncy music about magic. The people running it had even worked out how to spell, and had (mostly) worked out the art of the apostrophe. "Aon sí, called the Sidhe, out of Celtic folklore and kind of like elves….hmm, a lot of people stick them together with the Scottish ones, Seelie and Unseelie, but a lot of people think they have wings…they're supposed to be either stunningly beautiful or hideously ugly."

Meghan's expression lit up, and she slid back down obediently beside her. "That could work, let me see." Without waiting for an answer, she snatched the sleek black contraption back and started searching. "They live in courts, outside of our reality, but you're supposed to get there through hills or trees, so I don't know." More frantic clicking, and her face fell. "There's a zillion different kinds, and some of them are really weird, like dogs or banshees, so unless he's actually a spirit escaped from Hell we're out of luck. Man, I hate the internet." She paused in her ramblings long enough to stare thoughtfully off into space, and then lit up once again as the next wave of ideas struck.

"Maybe he's just a really sexy goblin? I mean, some of them are supposed to be tall, and not all of them have to be ugly." Meghan grinned at the thought, typing frantically once more and scrolling past several pages written in glittery pink font that made Sarah's eyes bleed. "But I don't think they hang out with humans, or turn into owls. The only part that fits is stealing your brother; they're notorious for running off with children." Suddenly, as if electrified, she jumped up from her perch and lurched in the direction of her book collection. Rapidly scanning along the shelves, she came up with a thin, brightly colored children's story held aloft.

"Outside Over There is a classic, Sar, and I think it might actually help." She sat back down, flipping through the pages. "Let's see if I remember the story right…A young girl has her baby sibling stolen, and has to go off into another world to rescue them, before they get turned into a goblin and go away forever…any of that sound familiar to you?" Meghan handed over the book to Sarah, who took it from her gingerly, eyes scanning the pages. The illustrations did look very familiar, though these goblins had far less variety than the ones in real life. She had to choke down a laugh, however, at the notion that, of all the resources at their disposal, the one that was most helpful was a fairy tale.

"Although, if you go by this version, they usually want to marry the kid off to one of their own, not use them to get you to marry them." Meghan shook her head, exhaling a sigh of frustration. "This is just going in circles, Sar, and I don't know how long we can keep you awake through coffee." She stood again, pacing back and forth across the floor. "Do goblins even have marriage?" she mused softly, expression faraway. "Maybe they just throw orgies? Since they can't have kids, according to the books at least." She shook her head, and slammed a hand against the wall. "I just wish we knew what on earth these _dreams_ have to do with anything! I mean, why would he be doing something like this? It just has no point!"

So much for the idea that two heads were better than one. They'd been at this for the better part of an hour, and so far the only thing they'd determined was that Sarah was getting more sleep-deprived by the moment, and had no idea why. No matter what answer they came up with, there was simply no thread of myth or magic or even logic that would connect who she'd known Jareth to be, and the idea that he would be trying to overrun her mind with debilitating nightmares, thereby pulling her out of reality. It just didn't make sense, and the longer they both tried to work it out, the more turned around and confused they became. There was just something _missing_ from their calculations.

As she sat in silence, waiting for the next brilliant idea to strike, Sarah lifted her head to stare out the open doorway into the hall outside. She felt her concentration slipping and instinctively downed more of the rapidly cooling coffee in her hands, just in time to catch that flash again – a glimpse of pale fabric and movement in the corner of her eyes, just outside the view of the doorway. Setting the mug down, she stood, her mind racing. Surely he couldn't be following her here?

It rolled smoothly down the hallway, almost leisurely, the reflective surface sparking with the light as it went by – a crystal, moving of its own accord, away from the room, in the direction of the staircase. Without thinking, Sarah took off after it, following the path it left, getting the eerie sense that she was drawing closer to someone who watched her with every step. There was only one person who did things like this, only one person capable of striking such a powerful sense of déjà vu into her every movement, and in her current state of mind she would have loved nothing more than to throw something large and heavy at his head.

It wasn't until she stepped outside, blinking as stars and imprints danced across her vision, that Sarah realized how long she had spent indoors. Her roommate was a self-professed creature of the night, prone to keeping the shades down at all times so that it was impossible to tell what time of day it was without a clock. From the looks of it, it was now the brightest part of the early afternoon, and the sun was currently aiming most of its efforts down onto her. The cool air rushed around her, almost welcoming, a relief from the stifling air of indoors. As she lifted a hand to shade her eyes, the crystal vanished. Forcibly, as if against her will, she found her gaze being drawn upwards.

Choking back a scream, Sarah stumbled, staring.

Standing on the edge of the dorm's roof, practically on air, was the Goblin King himself, in all his dark glory, outlined against the pale sky. His pale eyes were bright with ill intent, his smirk both familiar and chilling. A wave of involuntary fear swept through her, developing into a sense of absolute horror when she caught sight of what he was actually doing so far off the ground. In one hand, he clutched the familiar crystal, and in the other he held the throat of a young man, whom he had suspended in midair, thrashing against him weakly, utterly helpless.

Hazel eyes wide with fear, Kyle extended one hand out towards her in a silent plea for help, trying to pry himself from Jareth's iron grip with the other. His face was pale, and though his mouth opened and closed, no sound escaped him other than a choked gasp. Not only was he clearly suffering from vertigo and fear at the prospect of an imminent, painful death, he was slowly suffocating. Sarah felt static threaten to overwhelm her vision, yanking at the edges of her composure, causing her to tremble. Yet with it came anger, the edge of old defiance forcing her to remain steady, upright, outwardly calm. _How dare he._

"There you are, Sarah," Jareth purred, his voice soft with malevolence. "You're just in time for the show." Slowly, deliberately, he removed a finger from Kyle's windpipe, allowing him to let out a noise halfway between a snarl and a sob. It sounded suspiciously like a half-formed version of _Sarah._ "But I wouldn't let him fall," he crooned, mocking tone deliberately throwing her words back at her, forcing her to regret her actions.

In a single moment, it came to her. The memories of the games he'd woven, the strange and infuriating things he'd said, how he'd hurt her inside of her head and then thrown her back out of it again, unknowing. Most clearly of all, she recalled their last little dream-conversation, during which she'd jumped off a ridiculously high castle wall in order to prove the point that he didn't want to see her dead. Now, with a sense of mounting dread that would likely turn into paralyzing terror the moment she started being sane again, Sarah realized that this was his response. Jareth had stepped out of her mind altogether, into the plane of the very real and dangerous, in order to prove to her that he had absolutely no qualms about the death of other, innocent people.

Especially not when it came to the boy he viewed as his competition. This thought sent more anger running through her, that all of this was being done not out of any sense of any scheme or master-plan that she could see, but out of sheer male idiocy. The Goblin King was apparently not immune to jealousy, possessiveness, or being delusional about a woman's feelings when it suited him. Her feelings towards him were about as tender as a punch in the face, and actually, what her true desires were at the moment had nothing to do with begging, pleading, or submitting; what Sarah really felt the need to do was borrow a pair of steel-toed boots and kick him as hard as she possibly could in a place that would deliver a lifetime's worth of pain.

But her boyfriend was still being held off the edge of a roof by a psychopath, and said psychopath probably wasn't going to be persuaded by the suggestion that they let Kyle get on with his life unharmed (and in one piece) and go talk about this in the nearest café over a good cup of coffee. So, instead of doing any of the violent or idiotic things that came to mind, Sarah drew on the one weapon she still had left in her arsenal. Very deliberately, she let the panic that pulled on the edges of her vision take over, flickering past the edges of her self-control as it flooded in. The adrenaline shot through her, deepening the tremors that ran through her. She felt tears forming in her eyes, her lower lip trembling in the picture of submission.

"Please," she gasped out softly, noting the triumphant look on Jareth's face, "please, don't hurt him." Her gaze fixed on Kyle, drawing on every ounce of affection she'd ever felt for him. She forced it out through her gaze, letting it cover her expression. The smirk, borne no doubt from the belief that he had broken her, slid slowly off the Goblin King's face. "I…I love him. Just let him go. I'll do anything, just…let him go." The tears rolled down her face, and her knees nearly gave beneath her.

From the sudden, almost shell-shocked look she received, Sarah knew he was buying it. Either he would take her at her word, and demand the 'anything' part of it, or he would take his anger out on her in some other ruthless way, but Sarah failed at that particular moment to care. From her little performance, he would believe now that if he harmed Kyle, it would cement her hatred by breaking her heart. Predicting the man was about as easy to do as rearranging a storm and telling it to follow orders, but if he was anything like the Jareth she'd known, this would work. It had to.

Jareth's expression was frozen now, a pale mask of indifference through which a look of pure malice shone through. "You love him, do you?" His voice was harsh, the velvet of self-control all but gone, and unconsciously Sarah flinched. Perhaps she'd underestimated just how far over the edge of sanity he'd gone. His grip tightened on Kyle's throat, causing him to emit an even softer, more pained gasp, his face going ashen. "Let him go? Is that what you want?" His smirk took on another edge, poisonous. "All you had to do was ask." His expression utterly glacial, vindictive, he released Kyle, sending him plunging to the ground.

The real scream that had been building tore from Sarah then, a sound that vaguely resembled Kyle's name but was too ragged to be actual syllables. She lunged forward, the faint thought in her mind that if he landed on her, then he might live. From a distance, she heard something like an echo, crying out her name, but all of her attention was focused on Kyle, the universe slowing to the pace of molasses before her eyes. She was unable to move, frozen in place by her own traitorous muscles, full of the knowledge that she was going to be too late. Barely ten feet from him, she halted, eyes wide. He was crashing to the ground, with the most sickening noise, the crunch of a body breaking across concrete, his head seeming to splinter before her eyes…static swam across her vision, blackness threatening to follow…

"SARAH!"

Her eyelids fluttered open, the outline of an unfamiliar ceiling swimming in her hazy vision. A moment later, that view was invaded by a much more welcome one, warm brown eyes framed by black horn-rimmed glasses, and the worried half-frown that managed to be both comforting and alien. "Sarah? Are you all right?" Meghan had one arm wrapped around her back, her limp form sprawled across the battered couch, her head throbbing wildly.

The panic rose quickly as Sarah remembered, jerking out of Meghan's grip, her eyes wide. "Kyle! Oh my God, Kyle…" She raised a hand to her mouth, a wave of nausea causing her head to spin, and for a moment the world tilted slightly sideways. "We have to call the police, or an ambulance, or something…oh God…" She could feel the tears rolling down her face, vision blurring with liquid, sobs choking off her words as the grief and terror truly sank in.

Meghan frowned again, an expression that scrunched her nose oddly, and pulled Sarah up against her, moving them both down on to the couch. She paid no heed to the fact that Sarah was now crying all over her shirt, instead peeling her off and bracing her hands on her shoulders, forcing her to pay attention. "Sarah, it's all right now, you're awake again, and…" The metaphoric lightbulb burst into life above her head. "You remember! Oh, this is great, you remember! But what happened, why are you crying?"

Sarah stared at her, arms crossed over her chest, eyes wide. "What are you talking about? How can you not know? How can you be so…so calm?! Kyle's dead!" It came out as nearly a scream, and again she lunged forward, trying to get to her feet. Again, Meghan held her patiently down, looking at her as though she were a misbehaving child who simply hadn't realized what the lesson of the story was yet. "And Jareth…that son-of-a-bitch…"

"Sarah, calm down. Much as it pains me to say this, Kyle's fine." Meghan spoke slowly, softly, as if afraid to startle her. "He called while you were…out…to check in with you, said he might come by later." Her dark eyes flickered back and forth over Sarah's expression, the rapid breathing, the adrenaline pounding through her veins, in the most maternal glance she'd ever managed.

"Sarah, you were dreaming. You fell over while I was being all broody, and hit your head on the table. At first I thought I'd better let you sleep, that you'd come out of it, but you were shaking and moaning and maybe even crying, and I have to tell you it was one of the scariest things I'd ever seen once you actually started screaming. You were yelling Kyle's name, and something about Jareth." Meghan released her, satisfied that she wasn't going to run wild-eyed up the street like a schizophrenic, and retreated to the armchair across from her. "I'm guessing from the panic attack that it was a nightmare."

Sarah nodded slowly, feeling the terror subside as the knowledge sank in, the flow of tears slowing but not yet ended. She had been dreaming, and hadn't even known it. The ache in her chest did not belong there, was not real. When she had lapsed into silence, she had fallen asleep without realizing, and had simply believed she was in reality until Meghan had the sense to try and wake her up. The crystal, the roof, the sight of Kyle's body shattered on the ground, all of it…had just been a nightmare. There was no death, no pain, no grief…just a dream. An alarmingly vivid, eerily real one, that still sent images flashing through her thoughts and caused her to wince, a sob halting in her throat.

Instinctively, Sarah reached for the coffee mug she'd left behind, and drained the rest of its contents in an attempt to sober herself up. Her body still trembled, but with the knowledge that it wasn't real came anger, reviving her sense of reason. "I remember now, Meghan. I remember all of them, the dreams, I mean. And this last one was so real I didn't even know I was dreaming." She got to her feet, brushing the sodden hair across her forehead out of her eyes. "It's getting worse, it's…it's like I can't tell the difference between being here and in my mind any more. It's like he's trying to take over me completely." Her gaze hardened, and lifted to meet Meghan's. "I'm not going to let that happen."

Meghan nodded, immediately back on-track with the discussion, her expression brightly thoughtful once again. "There has to be something we're missing here, something we haven't picked up on. Otherwise this just makes no sense. Hmm…" She trailed off, biting her lip. "Your dreams are pulling you further and further into your own head, probably so that you end up not knowing which reality is his and which is this one. But why?" She rose as well, pacing back and forth as she thought aloud. "If he already knew he could yank you into his freakish Alternaworld when he wanted, then why would he break into _this_ reality and hack into your brain? It just doesn't make sense."

She went to sink back down, and then the nonexistent lightbulb came on again behind her expression. "Wait a minute…" She moved towards Sarah, grasping hold of her arms. "What if this isn't about you? If it's not about seducing you, or stealing you, or playing with you…what if it's about distracting you? Keeping you locked inside your head?" Meghan's expression was slightly wild, as she came to an obvious conclusion behind her eyes. "What could he possibly want that you would keep him from taking?"

The sense of dread was absolute as it settled over Sarah's already-frazzled body. She _knew, _instinctively, exactly what Meghan was getting at, and it terrified her more, somehow, than even the thought of Kyle's gruesome death. She had the innate sense that the question that was coming, however rhetorical, was going to be the worst one yet. She had been locked inside her own mind before with him, and then it had been for one very specific reason: to stop her. She refused to follow the thought through to conclusion, but if he wanted to keep her away from something… then suddenly it would all fall into place.

Jareth had been known to play all kinds of tricks in the hopes of keeping her from the prize, and his idea of fair would give a roomful of lawyers conniptions. All of that was four years in the past, four years buried in her memory, and it had all been about something, no, _someone_ that she had won the right to keep even then. But if it was true, if the Goblin King was cheating at his own game, then she knew. She knew exactly what Jareth could want, that she – and only she – had the power to take away from him.

"It's not about me," she half-whispered, frozen. "It's about Toby."

In half a heartbeat, she lunged for the door, snatching up her keys along the way. It didn't matter that she was sleep-deprived and currently fueled only by caffeine, which was ebbing from her system. It didn't matter that she was dazed and still half-convinced that her boyfriend was a bloody smear on the concrete; nothing mattered half so much as the image of her little brother, frightened and alone, wailing at the feet of the Goblin King. She'd stop this if she had to run through the whole damn Labryinth all over again.

"Where do you think you're going?" Meghan's hand clamped down on her wrist. "You are not driving anywhere, narcolepsy-girl." She snatched the keys, caught their glint in the light, and grinned. Seizing the bottle of caffeine pills off the bookcase, she caught Sarah by the arm, and began hauling her forcibly up the hallway. "Don't worry, Sar – you can have shotgun."

xxxxx

_(Author's Note: To anyone who happens to be concerned by my characterization of Jareth, let me reassure you: it's all very deliberate, and there is a perfectly logical explanation for why he's being such a bastard.)_


End file.
